G.I. Joe No Longer the Real American Hero? 548
Advocate123 writes "Clearly, Hollywood has forgotten the, 'Real American Hero.' G.I. Joe originally symbolized the American WWII soldier and a great generation. Now Hollywood celebrities are going to turn him into a international multicultural coed task force with no government affiliations. Isn't anything sacred to these people?"
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:modern times call for it (Score:1, Interesting)
I have no problem with an idealistic view of the world as something to strive for, but pretending that everything will be alright and the world is peaceful with people hugging and singing koombaya if we blame ourselves for every single thing really pisses me off. If you haven't noticed, cooperation means that other people must want the same thing too and there are all kinds of nasty people, illogical people, indifferent people, and so on out there. Some want you dead or subjugated for no other reason than your not believing in their religion. Some would rather die than accept an act of friendship from you. This is the reality.
Re:Damn It! (Score:3, Interesting)
'Action Force' in the UK (Score:2, Interesting)
Action Force [wikipedia.org].
I find it amusing that the "coordination facility of the government of the United Kingdom [..] activated in cases of national or regional emergency or crisis" is called... COBRA [wikipedia.org].
Re:be fair now.. (Score:3, Interesting)
You'll find similar relevence if read Homer's Odyssey or The Epic of Gilgamesh. Simple reason is because they are all stories about men that were written by men (I use the term men to refer to the species, not the gender). Also, you may be inspired by the text, particularly if you can convince yourself that Homer was the son of Zeus or that The Epic of Gilgamesh was written by followers of Kumarbi.
Re:be fair now.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Really? I'm a pacifist Christian who opposes the death penalty and Bush, so let me respond from my point of view.
I do not believe the Bible condemns fighting in a war, at least not clearly. The New Testament talks a lot about (Roman) soldiers, and neither Jesus or the Apostles had anything bad to say about them. A centurion even converted to Christianity, and there's nothing there about him having to leave his job. As much as I consider myself pacifist, I do not attribute that to Christianity.
Death penalty is a punishment for a wide variety of crimes in the Old Testament. That's where it says, "Thou shalt not kill". From what is told in the OT, it seems obvious to me that the alternative rendering of "Thou shalt not murder" captures the intent better. All sides in the Old Testament fight lots of wars and kill a lot, there are even death penalties, and no bad words about that by any profets or anyone else.
In one sense you might be right. You talk about self defense, and that's an issue that's not so clear in Bible. It would be, in my opinion, a fair reading that you should not resort to killing even for self defense. But when commanded by your legitimate king (who got his authority from God, as did all authorities), I believe the Bible tells you to follow the orders of your king unless the orders are in direct contradiction with the Bible - and that would be the Bible as it stands, and you have to weigh what it is credible it means instead of reading into it stuff you'd like to be there, like in my case pacifism and opposition to death penalty.
As much as I'd like to say the Bible condemns wars and the death penalty, I cannot.
Re:In other news.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In other news.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, I wouldn't expect feminist groups to speak up about a lack of women in the line: I mean, I'm sure most of them would rather keep OUT of the draft, should one ever return (I can't blame them, there, either. It's gone, and likely to never return, but if it did, I'd do all I could to avoid it, too.)
Of course, I doubt they didn't complain back then because we had "better things to do." I mostly lay the blame on:
1) Lack of national communication (With the Internet, we now have the capability of rounding up a group of irate people who hate just about everything that doesn't conform to their ideal for protests. Back then, you'd need to have essentially an entire town who was outraged by a toyline)
2) We were too busy accusing each other of being a communist. "So, when the Rooskies are gonna nuke us any minute, you want to discuss the RACE of a toyline? Sounds like you're just trying to divert attention, COMRADE."
3) Racists. Let's face it, in the 1940's through... well, to about 1970 I'd say, you could stand right out in the open and be as racist or sexist as you wanted. HOW long did it take the Civil Rights movement to get rights for blacks to use the same BATHROOM as whites? Not to mention how many people, not unlike the anti-gay rights movement of today, claimed that "interracial marriage will destroy the sanctity of marriage?" (Fortunately, many of those people are now dead.)
Blowing things out of proportion... while ignoring actual problems... is a tradition as old as man himself, though America has certainly done a lot of it in a disproportionate amount of time.
Re:In other news.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In other news.... (Score:1, Interesting)
I find it to be racist. It happens in minority-centered entertainment also, where finding whites can be like playing Where's Waldo. Hollywood self-segregates entertainment to cater to different demographics and their lingering racism.
Re:In other news.... (Score:2, Interesting)
You miss the point. I'm talking about something much more fundamental. No government issued corporate charters, no Big Business. No government issued land deeds for speculators, no Big Business. Eliminate government issued copyrights and patents as we know them, no Big Business. And on this point it makes no difference that some of these are done by the federal government and some by states.
I'm not hostile to your points about Federalism, it's a question I go back and forth on. Certainly the contemporary Federal government is leaps and bounds beyond its Constitutional mandate, we're in agreement there. But the point I want to raise is the dependance of Big Business on state action.
Libertarian capitalists are fond of talking about "smaller government", but capitalism can't exist without a whole lot of government action on behalf of the owning class. Which is why the original - and the only true - libertarians were and are liberatarian socialists, a.k.a. anarchists.
Re:In other news.... (Score:2, Interesting)
The idea of the state policing morality arises from the evangelical Christian view that God judges any nation that refuses to enforce those standards of morality as expounded by the evangelical Christian community's interpretation of the Bible. Therefore it would be possible to view that Al-Qa'ida is America's Nebuchadnetzar [wikipedia.org]. This is the chain of thought. Some time in the past, a covenant was made between America and G-d similar in spirit to the one made with Israel at Mount Sinai. There are problems with this view.
1. This covenant was made with a specific people. Techncally this covenant is contained in a document named Deuteronomy. The structure of this document is based on second millenium BCE suzerainty treaties [wikipedia.org]. I am aware that some may try to weasel in America in the verses in parshat Netzavim (Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20) where it says "I make this covenant with its sanctions not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us today before the L-RD our G-d and with those who are not with us here this day" (TANAKH JPS 1985 Deut. 29:13-14). The context is that those yet to be born of those present were included in that covenant.
2. It was ratified with accompanying signs and wonders. The mountain called Sinai on the eponymous peninsula is not the real Mount Sinai. The real Mount Sinai [wikipedia.org] is in Arabia. The rocks atop of that mountain is charred in a manner not reproduced outside of ground level nuclear tests. No miraculous/supernatural events of the sort recorded or any other were manifested at the founding of the American republic.
3. This sort of thinking arises from a pernicious doctrine that had infected Christendom since the early second century called supersessionism or 'replacement theology' [wikipedia.org]. However, discussion of this in detail is way beyond the scope of this post.
I do not dismiss with prejudice the character of the founders of the American republic. Neither do I the same with the fact that apart from a few problems, America has been perhaps the most noble experiment in human history. However, as with any nation, they do rise and fall. What could happen to America would be more of the 'Sin of Sodom' scenario (Ezekiel 16:49-50). This is an attitude of arrogance and haughtyness and that the poor deserve to die and to assist such would be a crime, all in the name of prosperity-- socioeconomic darwinism. That is a more immanent danger. How big should government be to protect us from enemies, foreign, domestic, and Divine?
As for the G.I. Joe issue, all that Hollywood is doing is showing their true colors. What they do not realize is that the only reason why they have what they have is because the stereotypcal armed forces member: european, african, latino with smaller percentages from elsewhere. Again it raises the spectre (I have spoken on this before on
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